Friday, 17 February 2017

Tired of the cold? El Niño and its high temperatures could return by the end of the year

There is a runrún that has been listening in the forums of meteorology for some months: the possibility that the Child will return sooner than we thought. At the end of the year, to be more exact.

And today the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that possibility. WMO believes that there is a 40% chance that we will end the year amid a further global rise in temperatures.

Between El Niño and La Niña ...

Ten months ago, we told you that El Niño was in retreat. El Niño or Southern Oscillation (or ENSO) is a cyclical - though somewhat irregular - climatic phenomenon that usually occurs in periods of two to six years.

It occurs in the waters of the equatorial Pacific and depending on its phase (El Niño >> Heat and La Niña >> Frio) has enormous effects on the meteorological conditions of the whole planet (hurricanes in the Caribbean, monsoons in India or droughts in Africa).

In the upper animation you can see that during the El Niño the Pacific waters accumulate a lot of temperature (due to the lack of trade winds that interact and 'refresh' the surface of the ocean) and it becomes a planetary radiator. Later, as if it were a pendulum, the Pacific is cooled, giving way to neutral conditions or La Niña, the opposite phenomenon.

...The nothing.

We expected that. Cold, cold polar. But the current conditions of the ocean are so neutral that experts call them "The Nothing".

However, something is happening on the coast of Peru. In areas near the coast, temperatures have risen to 1.5 degrees and models are beginning to point to the possibility that this "El Niño coastal" extends into the ocean and leads to a typical ESNO.

For now, forecasts indicate that neutral conditions are most likely to be maintained, but WMO wants to warn the authorities so they can prepare. It should not be forgotten that, at the moment, along with CO 2 emissions , El Niño is one of the most serious enemies of endangered habitats.